Twitter Y U No Offer Two-Factor Authentication?

The power 140 characters can have was felt again today. The Associated Press had their Twitter account hacked and a fake tweet was posted, stating the White House had been attacked and that President Obama was injured.

That single fake tweet caused the stock market to drop dramatically. The DOW dropping 130 points due to the temporary panic the tweet caused amongst an on edge public, already highly sensitized to mentions of bombings in the media.

A brand’s Twitter account is of massive value and government, media and other organizations rely on it as a key tool to get information to the public. With that being said, why is it that Twitter has not enabled two-factor authentication?

Google has already implemented two-factor authentication, as has Apple and Microsoft. Twitter is no longer a startup, they are a core service that is relied upon by more than half a billion users. It is time for Twitter to put their big boy pants on and make the move to provide more advanced methods of security.

The value that many companies and brands place on their Twitter account could easily be monetized by charging for such a feature. I am sure Twitter is aware of the issue and is working to bring two-factor authentication to their platform, but cases like this show why they should step on the gas a bit.

Instead of imposing two-factor authentication on a half-a-billion users ( 99.999 % of them are simply following others….) why not to impose on Opinion Leaders ( i.e. News Agencies) to add electronic signature to their tweets ?